Skip to content
Moxonomy

Pygmy Allosaurus

Creature — Dinosaur2 generic manaGreen mana

Swampwalk on a green creature is a piece of color-pie geometry pointed exactly where it should be: black is the color that fills the board with Swamps, and landwalk is an offensive keyword designed to punish whoever plays the matching land type. The Ice Age cycle handed each color a walk aimed at a plausible enemy, and green attacking into black is a real matchup, which is the design logic that keeps this from being arbitrary. The trouble is the rate. Swampwalk only earns its keep when the defending player actually controls a Swamp, so the card's entire reason to exist is contingent on who sits across from it; against any other deck, this is effectively a 2/2 that costs more than a vanilla 2/2 should. Landwalk is the most conditional evasion Magic ever printed: nothing on an empty board, nothing against the wrong colors, and unblockable against exactly one opponent. That fragility is why the mechanic was eventually retired from main-set design in favor of always-on keywords like menace. What this represents, then, is a snapshot of an early-design instinct that has since been abandoned: build evasion around predicting your opponent's mana base rather than around the board you can see.

Pygmy Allosaurus (ice)
ICE · #257rare
Pricing
Normal: $1.29
Foil:
Oracle Text

Rules text

Swampwalk (This creature can't be blocked as long as defending player controls a Swamp.)
Legalities

Format Status

Standard
N/A
Pioneer
N/A
Modern
N/A
Legacy
Legal
Vintage
Legal
Commander
Legal
Pauper
N/A
Brawl
N/A
Historic
N/A
Alchemy
N/A
Timeless
N/A
Standard Brawl
N/A
More formats
Old School
N/A
Premodern
Legal
PreDH
Legal
Pauper Commander
N/A
Oathbreaker
Legal
Gladiator
N/A
Penny Dreadful
N/A
Duel Commander
Legal
Future Standard
N/A
COMPETITIVEBRAWL
N/A
TLR
Legal
Quick navigation
move selectesc close